Blood Bond (10 page)

Bryce took it, didn't flinch. Examined it closely, squinting to make out the details. Laughed. “Yeah, I know about that project. Mira Vista Business Park, right? That wasn't one of mine, though.”

“No. It was one of your competitors, but I thought it showed that Dybck seems to be getting more extreme.”

“Let me guess. You think one of these guys, Dybck or whoever, is trying to intimidate me. Blood on the door and all that. And what, they just bumped off Tom Bergman because he happened to be there?”

“An accident,” Joe said evenly. He found Bryce's tone immensely grating, and wondered how Gail could stand it. Wondered who would vote for it. “Mr. Bergman startled him. We found some impressions on the lawn that indicate a brief struggle. The blood came from that direction as well, splashed toward the driveway.”

“You got footprints? So that ought to narrow things down. Get a few people off your list, anyway—right?”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Engler, you have a very nice lawn. Doesn't take impressions well. And whoever was there evidently realized that walking on the drive was a bad idea, because there's blood trace in the flower beds and on the grass almost all the way out to the curb.”

Engler took a long sip of his beer, bringing the level down to halfway. “Well, I can't tell you any more than I already have. Are you going to go talk to him?”

“Dybck? Yes, that's the plan.”

Engler nodded, draining his glass and licking the foam off his upper lip. “The service is tomorrow, did you know that?”

“Yes. I'll be there.”

Engler studied him for a moment, then gave him a halfhearted salute with his glass.

“Looks like the two of us are going to be seeing a bit of each other. Maybe I ought to start working on you for your vote. You live in the county?”

Joe nodded. “San Ramon. But I'm not much for politics.”

Engler raised an eyebrow, regarded him thoughtfully. Joe figured Engler was trying to guess at his background. When people met Joe—talked to him, found him unexpectedly “American,” to use the word more than a few people had intended as a compliment—they sometimes assumed that his family had been here for generations. He'd even been asked if he had been adopted. There had been a time when such assumptions infuriated Joe; now they just made him feel tired.

Even with the influx of well-to-do Indian, Asian, and Pakistani immigrants into Montair and San Ramon, a small but vocal kernel of the community was still convinced they were all working some sinister agenda. The Asian Invasion—that's what all the parents who pulled their kids from the local schools called it when they “started to be outnumbered,” as though racial diversity were toxic and contagious. More than once, when Joe was still a uniform cop, he'd taken a complaint from a Montair resident who was convinced that the robbery or vandalism that had taken place at their home or business “had to be” the work of kids from immigrant families, as if their resentment and disrespect for the law were foregone conclusions. “No offense,” they'd often add, but for a long time after his father's attack, Joe lived in a constant state of painful offense.

He'd savored his bitterness, hypersensitive to slights and insults, even as he felt guilty about not spending more time with his family. Osman slowly recovered, his mother implored Joe to visit more, Omar started his new life—and Joe stayed on the periphery, caught between two worlds, between the past he could never return to and the future he wasn't ready to engage in.

Still, eventually, he'd begun building a life again. He played softball on a department team. He dated, went to parties, took trips to Tahoe and L.A. with friends. His niece and nephew were born, and Joe drifted back into the family. The anger that had a chokehold on the country faded, and people stopped giving him dirty looks at the airport.

In the end, he just got tired. Prejudice was the sort of problem that took generations to be solved, not years. Assimilation, integration, these were concepts that Joe tried not to spend much time thinking about anymore. He knew it was only the diverse population of Northern California that made his complacency possible, and for that he was grateful. But once in a while, like now, the old sensitivity was provoked.

He wondered what Bryce would make of his family. His parents, in Fremont, drank a lot of tea; his father stayed up all night watching the Cricket World Cup. They were close to the age where they could give up fasting; they skipped Friday evening prayers from time to time.

His brother Omar was pushing his kids hard in sports. Omar was convinced—though Madiha and Taj were only in first and third grade—that they had real potential. Not that they'd ever need sports scholarships. Omar would be able to pay for their educations several times over; he'd sailed through the dot-com years that left everyone else bleeding in a ditch.

“You know, Detective,” Engler said, interrupting Joe's train of thought, “everyone's got a taste for politics. Some people just don't know it yet. And you know why? It's because it's never really about what it appears to be. You think anyone in the valley gives a shit about water, as long as it keeps coming out of their taps? You think anybody'll miss some hawk or lizard that goes extinct, as long as they can pay two thousand bucks for a labradoodle? No. People want what they want, when they want it. And right now people want a place to live, here, in this fuckin' great town of ours, where the schools are good and the wives are pretty and the people who wash our cars and bus our tables and cut our grass go back home to Concord or Pacheco when they're done and leave our daughters alone.”

Joe felt a burn starting at his ears; his jaw worked. In that instant he understood something he'd been missing—what drew Engler and his frightening wife together. It wasn't their cynicism; not even their icy hauteur. It was the pleasure they got out of being on top. Not just satisfaction, not just ruthless determination to stay there, but an unshakable zest for seeing everyone else around them a couple of rungs down, and the thrill of letting people get just close enough to remind them that they couldn't truly get next to the flame.

Those who tried to get too close were burned and their ashes forgotten.

Joe flashed on Marva—the quiet sister. In any other family she might have blossomed on her own, become a spectacular adult. Instead she'd been stunted somewhere like a rosebud that sees a late frost—the petals are still there, coiled tightly together, their colors hinted at through the dried outer layer, but doomed to fade and eventually droop and fall to the earth.

Joe pushed back his chair and stood. He nodded at Engler, who regarded him with a bemused smile.

“That's certainly one way of looking at it,” Joe said evenly. “All the same, I don't know if I agree. I have what might be considered a small life, I work a lot, I like it that way. Seems to me your system runs on dissatisfaction.”

“All the better for you then,” Engler said, giving Joe—what else?—a crushing handshake. “See you tomorrow.”

Joe fought the lie's burning passage to his gut, walking out in the bracing cool air. In truth, he did not consider his life small, but he couldn't say with conviction that he liked its design or even if he was its principal architect. Events pulled him along, and he let them, not fighting the current—but always feeling like he was fighting, just the same.

 

CHAPTER TEN

THE FUNERAL SERVICE FOR
Tom Bergman was due to start at ten. At nine fifty Marva gave up on trying to be subtle—she craned her head around at the back of the church. Like a wedding, waiting for the bride to appear, but it was Gail whom Marva sought.

They'd spoken at seven. Gail had called and Marva had immediately apologized for the argument, taking the blame for the entire incident almost instinctively. By the time Marva realized she was still angry, Gail had already forgiven her and was saying
I need to go the gym, I'll go crazy if I don't work off some of this energy
. Marva forced herself to keep her opinion to herself, but really—today, of all days? But that's how it always was, wasn't it? Gail's selfishness didn't allow her to see past herself to what others needed.

At nine, Bryce called wanting to know if Gail was there. Marva took the call in her underwear, the constricting body shaper making it a challenge to breathe. She'd been ironing her most conservative outfit, a skirt and top in a deep purple that might pass for black.

When she told Bryce that she hadn't seen Gail, he'd muttered, “Oh, Christ,” and hung up without saying goodbye. Not being intentionally rude, just incapable of seeing beyond his own agenda. Isabel didn't usually work on Sundays, so he was probably beside himself trying to watch the kids and get ready.
Let him change a diaper for once,
Marva thought.

The pastor made his way to the pulpit and Marva turned back toward the altar, trying to concentrate. She kept checking her watch. Fifteen minutes into the service, she allowed herself to glance around. The church wasn't as full as she had expected; not as full as it would be for Bryce, for instance.

Still no Gail. Marva studied the back of Elena's head. Thought that she should have had her hair blown out, then rebuked herself—that was the kind of thought Gail would have.

In line to pass by the casket, she took the opportunity to glance around again, and still there was no sign of Gail and Bryce and the kids. She knelt, made the sign of the cross, and stood again before she realized that Tom Bergman looked like a complete stranger, his features arranged into a placid mask by the undertaker's hand.

ON THE
way to her car after the service, she turned her cell phone back on—six calls from her sister's house. She dialed the number.

Bryce picked up, already speaking when the connection was made—“Is she with you? Have you seen her?”

“No,” Marva said, and felt a hitch of fear. She'd thought he'd have an explanation, some new thoughtlessness on her sister's part that caused the entire family to miss the service. She paused at her car, her sensible Subaru, placed a hand on the trim around the window. Warm, from the October sun.

“For God's sake, Marva, where the hell could she have gone?”

Bryce was irritated, Marva could tell, and wondered if she could take some comfort in that. Irritation meant Bryce thought Gail was just being irresponsible. Like she so often was. She'd gone to the gym, and—what? Went out for a latte? Decided to go shopping?

Never, Marva thought, without a shower first—and not the public one at the gym.

Her phone beeped, and it took Marva a second to realize that the sound meant she had another call, something she didn't recall ever happening before.

“I'll come over to the house, Bryce,” she said hastily, and clicked over. “Hello?”

“Marva, it's Aidan. Have you talked to Gail?”

The fear-sense deepened. “No—have you?”

There was a pause, then: “I called her this morning, at around nine, on her cell phone. She didn't answer. I wanted to—with the service, and everything—”

“She didn't come. She wasn't there. And I just talked to Bryce and he hasn't got any idea where she went. I mean I know she went to the gym but that was hours ago—”

“Are you saying she's missing?”

Marva opened her mouth to answer, found she couldn't say the words.
Missing
—no, that couldn't be right; Gail just wasn't
here
.

“What are you doing now?” Aidan's tone suddenly brisk and efficient.

“I'm on my way to their house. I don't know, I need to talk to Bryce and see what he knows.”

“Call me when you get there. Okay, Marva? Please.”

A FEW
blocks from the gated entrance to the Foothills a new strip mall had sprung up. It had a clay tile roof, mission-style stucco trim, but it was still a strip mall with a dry cleaners, a pizza shop, a shoe repair.

Marva saw the Starbucks on the corner and pulled in. She wasn't the sort to drink coffee in the middle of the day, but at that moment she wanted the hot bitterness on her lips. She needed to feel something other than panic. She bought a tall drip and sank onto a stool at the granite counter that ringed the inside of the store.

Then she gave up and let the thought come: today, the third of October. Two days after the anniversary of the night it happened.

It had taken Jess Bartelak's family two days to make the decision to disconnect the machines. Jess had died on October 3.

She felt a surge of dread so great it blinded her for a second. Jess, dead. Gail, missing.

She seized her purse and started pulling things out. Receipts, her makeup bag, a comb, pens. So many pens, she hated to be without a pen. Checkbook . . . nothing. She laid the receipts out and flattened them and sorted through them—and there it was, Detective Bashir's card, tucked somehow into a Safeway receipt.

She pulled out her phone and saw that her hand was shaking. She didn't even feel it, but the phone trembled. Marva stared at that phone and that hand and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do.

IT TOOK
Detective Bashir only a few minutes to return her call, but in that time Marva shredded the pile of receipts into messy strips, gathered them into her cupped hands, and put them in the trash.

“This is Detective Bashir,” he said. “Joe.”

“Detective—” Marva said, and swallowed hard. “I think I need to talk to you.”

“All right. Shall I come to you?”

“Oh, if you would. I'm—I'm in a Starbucks.” She gave him the cross streets and hung up, realizing he hadn't even asked her what she needed to talk about.

It took him thirty-two minutes to arrive; she stared at her watch, at the second hand trailing around the dial, and drank the rest of the coffee. When he came in, he had a just-showered look, hair still damp. He was wearing a neatly pressed pale sea-blue cotton shirt and a burnt-orange tie, and Marva automatically imagined the fabrics in patches, a design springing from her mind, eight-pointed star blocks with a navy background.

But when he offered his hand and held on a little longer than was strictly necessary, the vision faded, replaced by the warmth of his skin, and the feeling of relief that flooded through her. Which was crazy, because he wasn't her ally, or her consoler. He wasn't her anything.

But the look he gave her was so full of concern and compassion that Marva longed to tell him everything. There had been other times through the years that she'd wanted to unburden herself, that she wondered if telling would release some of the power the past held over her, but she'd never trusted anyone enough. Not even Harmon. But Joe had a way of measuring his words, speaking with care, that made her want to trust him. She wanted to believe that he was looking not so much for the guilty—to punish, to avenge—but for the truth, so he could restore the way things ought to be.

Marva was a fool and she knew it. Tom Bergman was dead, and Joe cared only about getting to the bottom of his death, but at the moment Marva didn't care one bit about Tom. She was terrified about Gail and tired of being responsible for her, caught between love and fear and resentment, and for some stupid reason, some trick of perception, when she looked at this man, this
stranger,
her synapses got all mixed up and it felt like she could trust him. That he could help her.

Her face flamed as her common sense caught up with her runaway train of thought. Sure. She could tell Joe everything, and he'd know that she
was
guilty, her and Aidan and especially Gail. He'd know about the suffering they'd all caused, and he'd have to do something about it. And that couldn't happen. Awkwardly Marva gestured to a table: “We should sit down,” she said. “I was just at the counter . . .”

Joe pulled out a chair for her and stood behind it politely before taking a seat.

“Don't you want to order something?” Marva asked. “I mean, can I get something for you?”

“Maybe in a minute. Why don't you tell me why you called, first. You sounded a little upset.”

“Well, it's—” She took a steadying breath. All right. All right, she could do this. She could ask for his help without giving up anything of herself. “Gail's missing. She wasn't at the service.”

“Yes, I noticed that.”

“You were there?” How had she missed him? She'd kept scanning the crowd, looking for Gail.

“We try to stay out of the way.”

“Bryce talked to her this morning when he got up, but now he has no idea where she is. She went to the gym a little after seven o'clock. I talked to her right before that.”

Joe was watching her carefully, his brows knitted with concern. “Is there some special reason why you're worried about her?”

But what to tell him? If it was nothing—and it
had
to be nothing—telling Joe would make things worse. All these years she and Aidan had worked so hard to sweep away all the traces of what happened. Telling Joe now would bring it all back out into the light. Better just to get them looking for her, sort out the reasons why later.

“My sister isn't stable,” she said, not meeting his eyes, unwilling to look at him while she spun the story.
It's not the first time you've lied to him,
she reminded herself. And it probably wouldn't be the last. “I'm afraid she . . . well, since the affair with Tom ended, she's been so upset.”

“Upset,” Joe repeated. “Marva . . . are you sure?”

Marva nodded and stared at his chin. “I know she seems under control. But she isn't. I just thought . . . if we reported her missing . . .”

The tension in her gut twisted so tightly that she gasped. What could Joe do? Send cops out to search the health club, the streets of the Foothills? Put out an alert for a silver Porsche Cayenne with a couple of kids' car seats?

A sound broke free, half sob, half gasp. Not a pretty sound. “I don't know what to do,” Marva whispered.

And Joe took her hands, reaching across the table and gathering them up and folding his strong, warm fingers around them. She could feel his pulse, and something inside her unhitched, the fear and remorse she'd been carrying for so long by herself.

“It's all right,” Joe murmured, and now she did look, and his eyes were dark and deep and full of concern. He pulled her hands toward him and leaned toward her. “Marva, listen to me. It's going to be all right.”

She knew she should pull away, knew that they were crossing lines that they had no business crossing, that she had made him do it. It wasn't all right, and it wasn't going to be. But the comfort in his touch, even if it was illusory, even if it was fleeting, was irresistible, and she held on.